Review: In Our Day (2023) and In Water (2023)

In Our Day

Few filmmakers can pop out feature films like bunnies in a petting zoo. Hong Sang-soo is one of the few. Keeping up with his release schedule might as well be a hobby, and even then a new title can come like a thief in the night. That said, we are now thirty movies into the cinematic vision of Hong and, for the most part, these things are all more-or-less cut from the same cloth. Much like the majority of its 29 precursors, if you’re already fond of his light and lonely style, In Our Day, won’t miss. The new film is one of the most recent of his eight features from the 2020s so far and is unmistakably sincere, characteristically niche, philosophizing, and palatably cute. So, it’s Hong!

If you know, you know. If not, In Our Days is a great place to start.

Continue reading at the Boston Hassle.

In Water

I’ll be honest: I never thought I would see a heavily shallow-focused South Korean film referencing water in the title… let alone two of them only a few months apart. Hong’s film is a few months, or close to a year, older than The Waves, The Sand, and Two Lovers in the Middle Of…, which I caught at the 27th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (PӦFF), though I saw the latter first. Somehow, the mouth-full title of the latter is even more experimental than is In Water, the more widely known and narratively driven of the two. The film (in)famously adopts an extreme shallow focus for the majority of its short 61 minute runtime and only rarely do the subjects come into full focus.

No one is accusing Hong of being overly narratively driven.

Continue reading at the Boston Hassle.